The Moral Animal — Religion binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism, creating relationships of trust strong enough to defeat destructive emotions. Nice of the author to say that. Has he looked at the public face of religion in the United States? Public religion in the US is not about altruism and trust. It’s about hating gays and liberals, punishing women and the poor, persecuting private sexual behavior, and promoting conservative in-group politics. Those positions have come to define religion in the public square in this country, everything from the Mormon church’s disgraceful support for Proposition 8 to the Catholic bishops’ pathetic but adamant lies about the ACA and birth control. Not altruism, persecution.

DUI Charge: Jan. 4 Court Date for Idaho Sen. Crapo — Hey, lookie here, a Mormon teetotalling Republican senator arrested for DUI. Good thing we have decades of moral leadership from conservative politicians and media to demonstrate the private lives and personal errors of politicians are off limits. I’m sure Senator Crapo will receive the respectful treatment he deserves, just like the Clintons and the Obamas and Kennedys always did. Meanwhile, yet another conservative public scold is revealed as a inevitable hypocrite, but no one on the Right will care. Social conservatives, my ass. Look, Clinton’s penis!

Regarding Amazon removing reviews, this has been going on for a while now and was a response to some writers, including self-publishing guru John Locke of “How I sold one million e-books in six months” fame, buying reviews from shady services or leaving sock puppet reviews on their own or a rival’s work. That caused something of a scandal a few months ago and so Amazon responded by removing reviews that seemed fishy to them. Unfortunately, they removed a bunch of reviews that were legitimate along with the fishy ones. And they still didn’t put a stop to flat out malicious reviews by people who dislike the fact that books cost money or are too stupid to operate their Kindle or accidentally bought the wrong book or stuff like that, because Amazon apparently believes that the customer is always right, even if he or she is clearly wrong.

But the real root of the problem is that many of the big promo sites on which self-publishers often rely to push their books refuse to feature a book or even allow the author to buy an ad for an extortionate price, if the book in question does not at least have ten or fifteen verified purchase reviews with a four star average. This is very difficult to get, unless the book is a popular bestseller, so some writers desperate to be featured on those sites resort to sockpuppets and fake reviews.